Mars Retrograde: December 20, 2009 through March 10, 2010

Mars is still retrograde, i.e. moving backward in the sky.  Because this is a time when the hero is called forth in all of us, I’m telling stories of heroes from Greek and Roman mythology as examples of heroic virtues.  Today’s virtue is resourcefulness, the ability to face obstacles cleverly and to sometimes overcome them by evading them.  The most resourceful and smart hero of Greek and Roman mythology is undoubtedly Odysseus (also called Ulysses).

Legends of Odysseus:  The Odyssey
Odysseus had finished up with some wars that were happening far from home and the Odyssey tells the story of the many adventures he encountered on his return to his loving and devoted wife, Penelope.  On the journey, he faced many obstacles, some of which required strength in battle, but many of which required cleverness, resourcefulness, wisdom and a pure heart.

Here’s one example:  Odysseus and some of his sailors entered a cave that contained some goat-pens.  It turned out the goatherd was the Cyclops, a terrifying giant with one eye in the center of his head.  It also turned out that the sailors found themselves trapped inside the cave, blocked by a boulder only the Cyclops could move.  It was no use killing the Cyclops, because only he could move the boulder.  So instead, Odysseus sharpened a pole and poked the giant’s eye out with it.  As the Cyclops fumbled around for his enemies, and moved the boulder to find out if they’d escaped, Odysseus and his men escaped by clinging to the undersides of some of the goats.

In another example, Odysseus managed to sail past the Sirens.  The Sirens were beautiful nymphs whose singing was so beguiling that they could tempt sailors to crash on the rocks for love of them.  Odysseus stopped up the ears of his crew with wax so they could not hear the Sirens’ song.  For himself, he wanted to hear it, but didn’t want to be a danger to himself or his crew, so he had them tie him to the mast and instructed them not to release him, no matter how he begged or threatened them (which of course he did).  In this way he was able to hear the Sirens while his men sailed safely past them.

Penelope herself was a fit match for her clever husband.  During the many years it took him to return home, many suiters came to press her to remarry, because surely Odysseus was dead.  Her response was: “Sure, as soon as I finish this burial shroud.”  Every day she worked on the shroud and every night, when no one was looking, she unraveled all she had woven.  In this way she fended off the pressure to remarry and was waiting faithfully for Odysseus when he came home.  Odysseus deserved such a wife because at the beginning of his journey a goddess had told him it would be very hard and offered him herself instead of Penelope.  But Odysseus knew that the love of a true, mortal wife is worth more than the whim of a goddess and he chose the journey with all its hardship.

Heroic Virtue #3:  Resourcefulness
Sometimes a battle is best won not by brute strength or by any kind of force at all.  Sometimes it’s about taking the right approach.  An obstacle is an obstacle and you always have the choice about whether to push through it or to find a way around it.  A clever hero looks for many ways to solve a problem and selects the one that leaves him fit to fight another day.

What Mars is Asking of You
During this Mars retrograde period, Mars wants to know:
Have you been fighting too hard?
Have you tried force when cleverness might win you the battle?
Is there a resource you’ve forgotten about?

Next:  Alliance—Castor & Pollux

Other articles in this thread:
Mars Retrograde:  The Hero’s Journey
Hercules, Hero of Strength
Achilles, Hero of Courage

Mars Retrograde: December 20, 2009 through March 10, 2010

Mars is still retrograde, i.e. moving backward in the sky.  Because this is a time when the hero is called forth in all of us, I’m telling stories of heroes from Greek and Roman mythology as examples of heroic virtues.  Today’s virtue is courage, the ability to face the enemy with a strong mind as well as a strong body.  The best example of that is valiant Achilles, hero of the Trojan war.

Legends of Achilles
Achilles, central character in the Iliad, was one of the best-known heroes in Greco-Roman mythology.  He was considered to be the paragon of manly valor and gorgeousness.  For Achilles, courage was based in fearlessness, because his whole body was literally invulnerable, except for one small part—his heel.  Yet he is known to us mainly by that vulnerability.  In modern-day, we speak of an ‘Achilles heel’ as a person’s chief, or only, weakness.

And how exactly did he come to have an ‘Achilles heel?’  According to the mythology, Achilles was the child of a mortal man and an immortal sea-nymph.  When he was an infant, his mother foresaw his death and gave him invulnerability by dipping him in the river Styx.  The Styx was the river that the dead must cross to get to the underworld.  In bathing the child in the river of the dead, she was giving him an early experience of death and rendering him, if not immortal, at least invulnerable.  But she held him by one heel and so that was the only part of him that never touched the underworld’s waters.  It thus became his only weakness.

Heroic Virtue #2:  Courage
Not much of a weakness for battle purposes, you might think, as perhaps his mother did.  Who would think to shoot Achilles in the heel?  Yet someone did, with a poisoned arrow, and that’s how he finally perished.  But on the way to that death he performed incredible feats of courage, which were bolstered by the kind of fearlessness that comes from repeated experiences of surviving when others around you are falling.  So Achilles stands for courage, because he fought bravely, without giving in to fear.

What Mars is Asking of You
During this Mars retrograde period, Mars wants to know:
Where have you forgotten to have courage?  Have you been listening to your fearful inner voices instead of your encouraging ones?
Are you focusing on your weakness (the heel) instead of your strength?
Have you been whining and complaining, when you could put your complaints aside and meet the obstacle more bravely?

Next:  Resourceful Odysseus

Mars Retrograde: December 20, 2009 through March 10, 2010

Right now, Mars is retrograde, which means it is moving backward in the sky.  Because this is a time when the hero is called forth in all of us, I’m telling stories of heroes from Greek and Roman mythology as examples of heroic virtues.  Today’s virtue is the most basic one Mars has to offer: physical force and pure strength.  And nobody is a better example of it than Hercules.

Legends of Hercules
Hercules was known as the greatest of legendary heroes due to his enormous strength.  He was your typical “big and stupid” kind of guy: he carried a club and once he even held the whole sky on his shoulders.

The best-loved tales of Hercules involve his Twelve Labors.  These started out as Ten Labors, but inflation set in because the king he was laboring for got nervous of the Herculean prowess and claimed that two of the labors “didn’t count.”  So Herc had to do two additional in order to stave off the anger of Juno, the goddess who was the original source of the demand.  Juno disliked Hercules because he was the illegitimate offspring of her hubby, Jupiter (who really got around).  Yeah, apparently old Mount Olympus was a real soap opera.

Hercules’ exploits included:
•    Slaying the Nemean Lion, a fierce creature that was terrorizing the countryside.  Herc slew it and wore its pelt as a snazzy outfit.  Otherwise he was not known for his fashion sense.
•    Cleaning the Augean stables, which were occupied by a herd of 3,000 oxen.  This had to be one of nastiest cleaning jobs ever required in mythology, because the stables had not been cleaned for 30 years.  Hercules diverted a river through the stables, wiping them sparkly in one swoop.
•    Slaying the giant Antaeus, who was a mighty wrestler.  Because he was the son of Terra, the Earth, each time he fell he rose up stronger than before.  Hercules defeated Antaeus by holding him up in the air and strangling him.

Upon Hercules’ death, Jupiter made him immortal, declaring that only the vestiges of his mortal heritage were burned away on his funeral pyre, leaving his immortal being to take his place among the gods on Olympus.  Juno decided Herc was here to stay and forgave him his illegitimacy.

Heroic Virtue #1:  Strength
Hercules was obviously a force to be reckoned with.  The tales of his many doings focus not on wit, intelligence or strategy, but on pure physical strength, brute force and the ability to assert himself and overcome.

What Mars is Asking of You
Strength and force are the most basic abilities Mars has to offer.  A Mars retrograde period is a time to look at your life and ask “Where do I need to use more force?  Where have I gotten weak?  Am I a pansy?  A 98-pound weaking?  Where could I use a burst of testosterone or a shot of adrenaline?  Where have I forgotten to assert myself—or maybe never learned to assert myself in the first place?”

A Mars retrograde period is a time of feeling pressure to draw that line in the sand.  It is marked by anger, irritation, annoyance and bursts of ancient, stuck ferocity trying to get out.

Modern people are uncomfortable with this rough-and-ready god.  Mars was not polite, nor was he cautious.  He was a man’s man and sometimes we need a dose of that.  It’s good to know he’s in your corner.  So if, during this Mars retrograde period you find places in which you have not been defending or asserting yourself sufficiently, call on Mars.  He is always there inside your fierce heart when you need him.

Next:  Achilles, Courageous Hero

Sunday, December 20, 2009 through Wednesday, March 10, 2010

What is Mars Retrograde?
“Mars retrograde” means Mars is in the part of its cycle where it is traveling backwards from our point of view here on Earth.  When Mars goes retrograde, we are cast upon a symbolic Hero’s Journey.

A retrograde period of any planet is a retrospective of that planet’s themes.  It is a time of moving backward, perhaps of going back to pick up pieces lost in the past.  It can be a retrieval, a turning inward, a letting-go.  A Hero’s Journey is a life-passage in which we retrieve our own heroism.  True heroism involves courage, strength, assertiveness, but also gentleness and appropriate restraint—and during this journey we are tested, in a number of ways, for those things.  While Mars is retrograde, we’ll face many opportunities to be a hero in a deeper, truer sense than we ever have before.

How Are Heroes Made?
As human beings, we feel the tug of the heroic journey because each of us (regardless of our physical gender or age) has a hero inside us and that part of us wants to become immortal.  This side of us, symbolized by Mars in our astrology chart, is drawn toward conflict and righteous struggle as we seek to retrieve the lost pieces of our heroism.  We want to be assertive but we don’t really want to hurt others.  We love a glorious battle, but what’s behind that is the simple desire to assert ourselves against a worthy obstacle, sharpen and hone our battle skills and emerge victorious.  To be a hero is to have at our command all the strength, courage and fortitude that we need to contend with any situation in life and come out a winner.

How Long Will It Last?
Mars will be retrograde from Sunday December 20, 2009 through Wednesday, March 10, 2010.  That’s a long time—almost 12 weeks.  Plenty of time to have a few interesting adventures that will test our mettle.  During this 12 week period I’ll be telling stories from the adventures of Greek and Roman heroes who exemplify certain heroic virtues.

Six Tales of Heroic Virtue

Strength—Hercules
Strength is naturally the first of the heroic virtues and Hercules exemplifies it.  His stories overflow with his vitality, hotheadedness and even his sexual prowess.
Courage—Achilles
The virtue of courage is shown by the story of Achilles and his famous weakness (his heel).  Paradoxically, his is a story of faith in one’s own invulnerability.
Resourcefulness—Odysseus
The virtue of resourcefulness is best shown in the craftiness and guile of the clever Odysseus, for whom the Odyssey (his journey) was named.
Alliance—Castor & Pollux
The famous mythical Twins (who make up the constellation Gemini) are a perfect example of the importance of brother- and sister-hood, the ability to form ties with trustworthy battle allies.
Invention—Alexander the Great
Alexander’s story is a historical as well as a mythical one.  His slicing of the Gordian Knot reveals the power of creating your own original solution.
Devotion—Orpheus
What good is a hero without something worth fighting for?  Orpheus was willing to go to the land of the dead and charm the Lord and Lady of that land to reclaim his beloved wife.

I’m going to have a LOT of fun writing these for your benefit and I hope you enjoy the process fully as much as I do.

Mars, the Inner Hero
Every one of us has a hero within us, and that would be Mars.  Mars is the heroic, strong, courageous, overpowering force that beats fiercely in the heart of every human alive.  When we need defending, Mars steps forward.  When we get into a fight, Mars got us there.  Making friends with Mars, and being aware of the gifts and challenges shown by his position in our chart, is the best way to become a hero.  (Contact me if you want a reading about that.)

What Will You Do With This Opportunity?
Heroes are made, not born.  This is not an easy process.  To become a hero is to exert oneself and likely fail many times before the ultimate win.  This involves not giving up along the way.  You must be able to hope and to imagine how to conquer even seemingly-impossible obstacles.  The tales I’ll be telling over the upcoming weeks involve more than strength—they involve courage, imagination, intelligence and even love and devotion.  A true hero fights for what is right when that is needed and puts down his sword in peacetime.  A hero in modern-day is not only a warrior, but blends all these human qualities into one seamless whole.  To be a hero is not exclusively open to men, but to women also, and children too.

Naturally, this means you.  What will you do with the opportunities this astrological event offers?  Will you see them as opportunities?  Will you take up your sword and follow the flag of your inspiration?  Mars demands not just comprehension, but action.  Mars doesn’t care what you think or feel; he cares what you do.  And when he’s awake in you, you are unstoppable.

Mars is retrograde now.  He’s raised the horn to his lips.  He’s uttered a battle cry.  Will you leap into the fray?

Everybody wants to be a hero somewhere in her life, but what area of life she wants to be heroic in differs from person to person.  Where do you want to be a hero?  To answer this question, you can look at the location of Mars in your birth chart.

The house your Mars is in represents an area where there is irritation, stress, strife and discord, as you learn (over the course of your lifetime) to go after what you want with appropriate force—not too much, nor too little.  You may have a tendency to see that area of life as a battleground.  It’s a great area for you to “fight the good fight” and be heroic.  Some of this stress may be self-created by you habitually approaching this area as if a battle is needed, when perhaps it is not.  Shifting your approach from that of a warrior to a hero can be the key to enjoying the stress as a worthy challenge and not being oppressed by it.

If you want to find out what house your Mars is in, you can order your own personal Astrology Chart Decoder.  This is a special tool I’ve invented that puts your chart’s details in English, instead of astrology symbols.  Your Decoder tells you where every planet in your chart is located:  the sign it’s in, the house it’s in and the exact degree it occupies.  When you’ve got your Decoder in front of you, you can easily see what house your Mars is in.

Where Do You Need To Be A Hero?
The First House is the domain of identity.  If your Mars is in the First House, you identify as a Warrior or as a Hero.  Your sense of yourself as a person, an individual, blossoms when you act decisively, heroically.  When you take actions out of impulse or anger and negative results happen, you tend to take it personally.  You just want to do the right thing and it hurts when you find your best efforts have missed the mark.  Let your life shape you towards right action.

If your Mars is in your Second House, you are a Hero of Protection.  Guarding and putting energy into the people and things you hold as your own is paramount.  You can become quite fierce when your security (or the security of someone you love) is threatened.  Ownership is the key to energy—when you feel listless and unmotivated, take an attitude of possession and ownership towards the thing you want to be motivated by, and your energy will rise.

If your Mars is in the Third House, you are a Hero of Words.  The pen may be mightier than the sword, but for you sometimes they are one and the same.  Words can be weapons, so watch to ensure you do not hurt people unintentionally with your sharp language.  You’ll learn, over the course of your lifetime, to curb your tongue and slow down your communication so that others can hear you—and so you can hear them too.  Pursue your avid curiosity, because learning gives you energy.

In the Fourth House, Mars bestows combativeness and challenges at home.  Mars is not very comfortable in the fourth house and can make it hard to feel settled and relaxed at home.  But Mars as Heroic Mama Bear can be quite fierce when it comes to defending your home, family and country.  Pour that drive and fierceness into real estate and you can do quite well providing yourself and others with housing.  Buy a fixer-upper to use up all your energy and make it exactly as you want it, for the pride and love of it.

In the Fifth House, you are a Creative Hero.  Your drive to bring the fruits of your creativity into the world are strong and you thrive on the attention it gets you, whether directly or vicariously.  Throw yourself into self-expression and beware of frittering away your energy on fun and entertainment, rather than channeling it into the creative directions that give you energy back.  Especially beware of gambling—it can be a powerful high in the moment, but its long-term effects can ultimately drain you.

When your Mars is in the Sixth House, you are a Hero of the Workplace.  You respond well to missions put to you by a strong, able boss and you can act independently at work.  Your boss needs to be someone you can respect, or you will strike out on your own, with varying results.  Your tendency to be fast and efficient makes you easily irritated with the slowness or obstructions of your workmates.  Take the time to make your work area organized so you can work in a streamlined way—that will give you drive.

In the Seventh House, Mars can make relationship a battleground.  You may be attracted to partner up (in both romance and business) with ultra-strong people so you can push on them and find your limits.  On the other hand, your frankness and honesty are appealing and in relationship, your Heroic Lover can be quite unabashed in pursuit of the partner you fix your sights on.  This I-Yam-What-I-Yam attitude is attractive to the right person and quickly sorts the receptive targets from the uninterested ones.

People who have Mars in the Eighth House tend to be strongly sexed and enjoy the pursuit and conquering games that are part of sexuality.  As a Sexual Hero, you may have a tendency to press others into further intimacy than they are ready for because of your impatience to get to the merging and connecting you desire.  Curb your tendency toward being a boundary-crosser and slow down your approaches and your “game” may improve.  Beware also of double-standards—no self-respecting partner will tolerate them.

In the Ninth House, you are an Adventure Hero.  Get out there and travel because your need to see the world and throw yourself into it is great.  Travel gives you juice, whether it’s external or internal, so pursue personal growth and ongoing education because your desire for self-improvement is strong.  You can ride on the energy of this by deliberately taking the attitude that “This is an adventure!!” towards anything you want to accomplish.

If your Mars is in the Tenth House, you have an ambitious streak.  You’re a Corporate Hero and the sky’s the limit as to how far you might advance.  Beware of alienating the higher-ups by your sometimes combative attitude—respectful soldiers get promoted but disrespectful ones get discharged.  Your energy and drive can’t fail to be noticed, but it’s up to you to make sure it’s noticed as a good thing.  A little generosity and thoughtfulness towards those above and below you will grease the tracks greatly.

With Mars in the Eleventh House, you’re a Hero With A Cause.  Driven by your ideals, you love to be the flag-bearer for your like-minded group.  You don’t mind taking one for the team and learning to play well with others is a valuable life-skill for you.  Watch that you don’t push your ideas onto others with too much force because you can be zealous about the ideas you believe in.  Develop your principles, because they are the source of your drive.  You are attracted to strong friends and enjoy leadership among them.

Your capacity to assert yourself may seem buried if you have Mars in the Twelfth House.  Most likely, when you were growing up, you felt that it wasn’t ok to assert yourself, be strong or hold strong boundaries in the home you grew up in.  You became sensitive about it and learned to hold your anger in until it sometimes exploded.  You were born to discover what it means to be a hero and how to properly express your force of personality on your path to becoming a Heroic Spiritual Master.

Aries Rams, how about a special birthday present?
Your birthday is your own personal New Year’s Day.
Having an astrology reading at this time can motivate you
to spring into action and get on track in the coming year.
Contact Jamie at pandora@pandoraastrology.com
to schedule a reading.